In the words of the great dramatist William Shakespeare: \u201cTo be or not to be; that is the question.\u201d<\/p>\n
Can drama provide the answer for those learning English as a foreign language?<\/p>\n
A Brock research team has found that using drama and theatre techniques in the classroom significantly improved students\u2019 fluency and comprehensibility in English.<\/p>\n
The study, co-authored by former graduate student Angelica Galante and Associate Professor of Linguistics Ron Thomson, focused on a group of 24 Brazilian adolescents learning English in S\u00e3o Paulo, Brazil.<\/p>\n
The researchers collected speech samples of the adolescents before and after their participation in a four-month, drama-based English language program.<\/p>\n
In addition to comparing the adolescents\u2019 before-and-after results, the researchers compared the adolescents\u2019 oral skills development with that of a control group \u2013 learners who received four months of traditional communicative English language lessons in the classroom.<\/p>\n
Thirty untrained Canadian native English speakers evaluated random speech samples from the two groups and rated the samples on their fluency, comprehensibility and degree of accent.<\/p>\n
The samples that proved to be the most fluent and easily understood came from the group that used the drama and theatre techniques.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis result is important because it indicates that explicit instruction can improve fluency compared to other communicative approaches \u201c says Galante.<\/p>\n
\u201cSome have argued that there\u2019s a connection between success in second language learning and your ability to see yourself as someone else,\u201d Thomson explains.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe person you\u2019re imagining doesn\u2019t have to be another person: it could be you. The idea is that the extent to which you can set aside your existing first language identity and assume a second language identity might promote optimal learning.\u201d<\/p>\n
Fluency refers to the fluidity of speech, or how easily someone is able to speak a foreign language. Comprehensibility is how much effort listeners exert in processing accented speech, while accentedness refers to how a speaker\u2019s accent and speech compares to a target variety of that language.<\/p>\n
Galante looked to drama and theatre education to provide some fresh approaches to helping non-native English-speaking people master these concepts.<\/p>\n
\u201cAfter going to theatre school, I started noticing the many strategies that we use on the stage could easily be applied in the classroom; for example, improvisation, intonation, voice projection, clear speech, expressing emotions, rhythm and appropriate pausing,\u201d says Galante, who is the study\u2019s first author.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhile both groups had traditional pronunciation lab classes, the learners in the drama group had opportunities to practice vocal projection, volume, improvised speech, and expression of emotions,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n
Galante says the research also shows that someone\u2019s accent is \u201cnot really a problem\u201d when it comes to understanding someone\u2019s speech or how fluent the person is.<\/p>\n
Thomson indicates that \u201cthe impact of a foreign accent on communication often has more to do with how much experience a listener has with a particular accent, and his or her willingness to listen to a foreign-accented speaker.\u201d<\/p>\n
Someone could have a very strong accent and still be comprehensible.<\/p>\n
\u201cA widely cited example is the \u2018Henry Kissinger\u2019 effect: he had a very strong accent but nobody had difficulty understanding him, whereas comprehensibility is important for communication, more so than accent,\u201d says Thomson.<\/p>\n
The study, published February 2016 in the online journal TESOL Quarterly<\/a>,\u00a0arose from Galante\u2019s Master\u2019s thesis, which explored ways to improve students\u2019 \u201coral fluency, comprehensibility and accentedness.\u201d A video abstract of the study can be found on YouTube here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" In the words of the great dramatist William Shakespeare: \u201cTo be or not to be; that is the question.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":20,"featured_media":4097,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1,5],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38386"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/20"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=38386"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38386\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":38423,"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38386\/revisions\/38423"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4097"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=38386"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=38386"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=38386"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}